Arte: Sex and bling, Klimt opens in Liverpool

In pictures: Klimt exhibition

· Vienna 1900 joins capital of culture highlights
· Last time, says curator, as price of fragile works soars

Mark Brown, arts correspondent
Thursday May 29, 2008
The Guardian

It is the first comprehensive exhibition of Gustav Klimt's work ever staged in the UK - and yesterday the man behind it predicted it will be the last.

Tate Liverpool yesterday previewed an exhibition four years in the planning, which opens on Friday, one of the highlights of a highlight-heavy year of events as the city continues its role as this year's European capital of culture.

"If I had known how bloody difficult it was going to be, I'm not sure I would have undertaken it," admitted Tate Liverpool's director and the exhibition's co-curator, Christoph Grunenberg. "It gave me many sleepless nights".

Klimt is the most expensive and most reproduced artist of the 20th century, loved for the seductive beauty of his work, the opulence and decadence. Owners of Klimts, galleries as well as private individuals, are increasingly reluctant to lend the works because of their enormous monetary value and their fragility. Grunenberg said: "It couldn't happen again. It's becoming impossible to do this kind of show. People just don't want to lend any more."

That is one reason the show is wider than just Klimt. The exhibition examines design and life in early 20th century Vienna and explores Klimt's role as leader of the Viennese Secession: a group of artists who espoused total art, whether painting or architecture, furniture or clothes.

As well as Klimt's paintings and drawings, Tate Liverpool has borrowed chairs, tables, cutlery and - appropriately, as the Secessionists believed in art touching every part of everybody - a rather handsome silver toilet tissue holder.

Then there's the sex. Klimt liked making erotic drawings of his models in not-in-front-of-your mother explicitness and Tate Liverpool has devoted a whole room to the artist's, er, line drawings.

"Obviously they are extremely explicit with the models behaving in a very, very open way as real, independent, sexual beings, so he wasn't just objectifying the women, he was presenting them as real, independent spirits," said Grunenberg.

The opening wow factor of the exhibition is a full-scale reconstruction of the Beethoven Frieze, a monumental installation finished by Klimt in 1902, which celebrates the concept of the total work of art, or Gesamtkunstwerk

Grunenberg acknowledged that Klimt had never been so popular. "There was a time when nobody was interested in Klimt, even during his life he was attacked as being just too decadent. I think it's partly to do with contemporary taste, with the sort of bling factor, the fact that gold is acceptable again. It is fashionable to wear gold."

Phil Redmond, the creative director of the Liverpool Culture Company, set up to deliver the capital of culture programme, yesterday said Klimt's approach to life fitted in with the psyche of Liverpool.

· Gustav Klimt: Painting, design and modern life in Vienna 1900 at Tate Liverpool, May 30-August 31

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2282534,00.html